“What do you think you’re doing? Get back here! Now!” he furiously says with his hands rather than his mouth. All those who live near the sea know hand signs so their ears can stay stuffed with cotton.
I gather whatever is left of the brave young woman I once was and race into the water, leaping into the rowboat. Charles has vanished from the window. He’s coming for me.
The sea that was briefly my friend has returned to being my enemy. I’m straining against the tide that attempts to push me back to the man racing around the lighthouse. I pull the oars, the wood ripping the skin from my palms. Two years here has made me soft. Gone are the calluses from working with my father around the house. The muscles from hoisting Mother’s crates and packages have left me. I’ve never felt so weak and…if I manage to escape him…I willneverlet myself feel weak ever again.
“Lizzie!” he mouths the pet name he gave me. He might actually be shouting. He’s rounded the lighthouse and is racing to the beach, but I’m already gone. “Get back here!” He points to me, and then draws his hands to his chest, sliding them down his torso to point at the ground. He gesticulates, ending by drawing his fingers across his neck. “You maddening woman, you’re going to get yourself killed!”
This is the closest he’s looked to caring in years. He only ever wanted me when I was someone he had to save—a young woman on the outskirts of a small town who looked at him like he was a god. He doesn’t loveme. He never did. He loves feeling needed. Important. What he loves is knowing that at any time of day, I am there to be whateverhewants. That I am here on this rock every time he leaves and am waiting every time he returns.
“I’m leaving. You can’t stop me,” I let go of the oars to say, drawing my hands away from my chest and waggling my fingers hastily, and then I begin rowing again. The rowboat is moving more easily now. I’m freeing myself from the current pulling me toward him.
“And where will you go? Who would have you? You won’t survive a day without me!” He gestures wildly. “You need me.”
I need him?I need him?“I neverneededyou.” He made me feel special. Feel…important. Desirable. All the things a young woman who never saw enough value in herself wanted. But none of it was a “need.” I was fine without him. Father taught me how to hunt, cook, and keep the home. Mother was teaching me how to trade—how to be clever with numbers and negotiations. Charles, on the other hand… He taught me nothing but silence and subservience. “You were the one who needed me!”
“Why would a man of means like me need a woman like you? You lived in a back-roads hovel before me.” He thrusts his fingers at me. “You werenothing. I pulled you from the dirt and gave you comfort and well-being. You should be groveling before me every morning and night. But you continue to try my patience with your insolence.”
“You lied to me!” I scream with my mouth and my hands. The pain cracks through my voice, I feel it more than hear it. My throat burns from years of unuse. “You told me that my family didn’t love me. That they didn’t want me anymore.”
But my family always did. Even when the dozens of letters I asked Charles to send were kept in a lockbox. They kept writing…and that is how I know that they will still love me, even as an oath breaker.
“Because it was true.” Charles’s face turns a scarlet that matches the last vestiges of sunset in the horizon as he continues speaking. His hands fly like wasps, trying to sting me with his words. My eyes burn as their meaning washes over me. “You are a sad, lonely, pathetic child. It is a relief every time I leave this island and can be free of you. Of course your family doesn’t love you. How could they? Who on this wide earth couldloveyou?”
The words batter my face and prick my eyes. He’s told me them enough times that I can repeat them before his fingers move. They’re barbs underneath my flesh. Constricting me. Holding me in place so tightly that I can’t escape without giving my blood as payment. Without letting a piece of myself die here, tonight.
I keep trying to row, but my hands slowly release the oars. His words are a tether that tries to yank me back. Charles pulls on one side of me; the land and all the freedom to roam it calls from the mainland.
I’m caught between what I know I want, and every thought he has filled my head with.
What if…he’s right?the barely eighteen-year-old version of myself that married him whispers from the depths of my mind.
Then, I see the letters as clearly as if I were still holding them.
Meeting Charles’s eyes, I release the oars and stand. I am not the girl he knew. I want him to see me as powerful as the rolling sea beneath me that he fears so much. I want him to finally acknowledge the woman I’ve become. I don’t care if it’s all an act and I feel like a fractured pane of glass, only held together by tension. All that matters is he believes me.
“I am leaving you like you left me all those times; but I am never coming back. I’m going to the people who actually care about me,” I sign slowly.
“And who would that be?”
“My family.”
“You really think they care about you? They were relieved you were gone! I was the one who was here for you.”
“They wrote to me!”
“You…” He stills, eyes as wide as the slowly rising moon. Charles’s features twist into an ugliness that competes with his soul. “You would dare to defy my order and go into my study? Do not forget: I own you!”
I shake my head. “No.” My teeth are almost chattering with my anxiousness. Instinct tells me to cower. It takes all my strength to stand.
“Your soul ismine. You swore it to me on the day we wed. You signed a contract. I will not let you break it, worthless wench! You will spend the rest of your life tending to this lighthouse, honoring me and doing as I say.”
Before I can respond, a swell of the sea rocks the boat without warning. I sway, trying to get low to no avail. I’m loose. The sky rolls above me and I am plunged into the waves.
The water is ice. I barely get my head above the surface in time to inhale sharply. Another wave crashes over me, ripping away my earmuffs and cotton.
“Charles!” I scream, using my mouth rather than hands as the latter are too busy fighting to keep me above water. The scarves and coats I wore to fight the chill are waterlogged, trying to smother me. “Charles!” I reach for him back at the shore.
He stares in horror. He stumbles backward. Charles watched his family be sucked out to sea. I wonder if their ghosts are now in the water with me.
